The Arizona Department of Corrections has agreed to investigate scores of complaints by inmates that they are routinely denied medical care for weeks or months even for severe, life-threatening conditions, The Arizona Republic reports.

The newspaper says the department agreed to the investigation to stave off a lawsuit. Report by ONDeadline.

Inmates who have lost sight, had body parts amputated or been severely disfigured, among other examples, say proper medical care could have prevented needless suffering, the newspaper reports.

A legal coalition that threatened the lawsuit charges that the department has been violating state and federal laws and the U.S. Constitution.

The newspaper says its own reporting, including interviews with current and former prisoners as well as a survey of dozens of complaint letters from inmates, raised similar concerns.

Among the allegations by inmates, prisoner advocates and attorneys:

• A diabetic prisoner, waiting months for insulin, lost sight completely in one eye and partially in the other.
• An epileptic who wasn’t given his medications suffered repeated seizures for weeks.
• A man with a growth on his penis was denied medical treatment for two years. Doctors ultimately diagnosed a cancerous tumor on his penis; the organ had to be amputated, and doctors told him the cancer had spread to his stomach.
• An inmate with a cancerous growth on his lip waited seven months for treatment. Most of his lip and mouth were removed, leaving him permanently disfigured.

Corrections officials say they have found no evidence of systemic problems, although they say pending plans to privatize prison health care have made it harder to fill medical-staff vacancies, The Republic reports.

The department notes that rule changes two years ago cut payment levels to outside contractors and crimped access to care.

Tammy Arizona, Inmate Health

KINGMAN — A state bill shifting the cost of some prison inmates to the county could prove costly to Mohave County if it goes into law in July 2012.

A state law states that starting July 1, 2012, a defendant sentenced to one year or less in the Arizona Department of Corrections will serve that time in the county jail. The exception is if the county has an agreement with the state prison system to reimburse the state for incarcerating a prisoner in the state prison. That could be at least $55 a day per inmate, Deputy County Manager Dana Hlavac said. Report by Tri-State Online.

The second part of the law states that the county will pay the state for any prisoner serving in the state prison after July 1, 2012, who has one year or less left on the sentence.

Mohave County sends about 70 inmates a year to the state prison for sentences of one year or less. The average sentence is about nine months or 270 days. That is equal to about 18,900 inmate days or the county paying the state an additional $1,039,500 a year.

Conservative estimates that the cost to Mohave County would be about $500,000 for inmates serving one year or less projected to still be in prison by July 1, 2012, and $1 million to send future inmates to prison after that date. The first year cost could be at least $1.5 million for those short term DOC inmates and $1 million for each succeeding year, Hlavac said.

If those inmates are kept in county jail, that would require additional jail staffing, which would drive up overall costs to the county. That does not take into account inmates with special needs such as mental health issues, chronic diseases or pregnancy needs. That also does not take into account inmates who pose a security threat such as criminal street gang members, Hlavac said.

Other overall costs would include medical costs, food, religious or prisoner rights or federal lawsuits filed by inmates. Mandatory costs could include sex offender treatment or drug or alcohol abuse treatment.

The county jail does not have to provide sex offender or substance abuse treatment because jail inmates are presumed innocent until they are found guilty. The jail is a short-term facility until an inmate is sentenced. The county’s costs to provide programs to DOC inmates at the jail are unknown depending on the inmate and the programs but could be an additional $100,000 to $250,000 a year, Hlavac said.

The county opened the 242,000-square-foot jail in October 2010 located next to the county administration building in Kingman. The three-story jail has space for 688 beds housing more than 700 inmates with room to expand to more than 1,100 beds. The new $72 million county jail is triple the size of the former county jail. The jail’s operating budget was $10.5 million.

The daily jail cost to house a jail inmate for the 2011-12 fiscal year was recently raised to $88.82 a day per prisoner. The previous rate was $79.46 a day per prisoner. There is also a one-time $65 booking fee. There are currently about 485 inmates in custody at the county jail.

Tammy Arizona, Budgets

After months of fighting with budget officials and the Board of Supervisors over cuts to the agency’s $228 million budget, Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott, an adviser to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, said negotiations with county officials had been productive.   Report from AZCentral.com.

“Unless I’ve totally misread this thing, I think we’re extremely close to an agreement, and public safety will not be affected,” Hendershott said.  The Sheriff’s Office could take a $7.6 million cut to its general fund, which primarily pays for law-enforcement patrol, and a $10.1 million cut to its detention fund, which covers jail operations, memos show. Officials are still negotiating the budget and said these are tentative cuts. The memos indicate that public safety would not be jeopardized by the following cuts, a goal of both sides:

• Eliminate vacant civilian positions to save $2.3 million. It is unclear how many positions could be cut and how many are now filled.

• Discontinue vehicle rentals to save $411,000. The rentals are used for investigations, picking up abused animals and transporting equipment.

• Reduce costs for aviation, ammunition, uniforms, supplies, education and travel to save about $1.4 million.

• Reduce overtime for patrol officers, administrative staff and other employees to save $1.4 million.

• Reduce extradition and travel to save $500,000.

• Eliminate vacant positions to save $3 million; this cut would not affect detention officers.

• Change the jails’ food-distribution system to save $926,000.

Hendershott said budget officials would trim the general fund by increasing the number of furlough days to 15 for all staff to save $3.6 million, cutting four sworn but vacant captain positions to save $626,000 and reducing repairs and maintenance by $500,000 for technology programs.  On the detention side, Hendershott said budget officials would increase the number of furlough days to 13 to save $6.2 million.

There is more background and detail in the full article at AZCentral.com.

vericatrajkova AZ Maricopa County, Arizona, Economic Issues, Personnel Issues

Several Republican legislators in Arizona are blasting a proposal to put some prison inmates into a home-arrest program — a proposal that actually was floated by their own party leaders.  This report from AZStarNet.

Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, said many of the people who would be eligible for an early release were originally charged with very serious offenses. He said the fact they were convicted of or pleaded guilty to some lesser crime as part of a plea deal does not make them suitable for home arrest. “They jeopardize women and children,” Harper said.

The fight stems from a request by legislative budget staffers to the Department of Corrections to figure out how much money the state could save if it allowed some people to serve the last year of their sentence on home arrest instead of behind bars.  The request was based on direction from the Republican chairpersons of the House and Senate Appropriations committees. Based on the criteria presented, the savings was pegged at $22 million …

Of 300 [potential release applicants] he reviewed, Harper found 50 who he said should not be released, even to a home- arrest program, one day before serving their full sentence.  The list is heavily populated with those charged with dealing or trafficking in drugs, many with more than 100 pounds of marijuana. There also were several whose prior charges or records included multiple drunken-driving convictions, domestic violence, theft and child abuse.  Harper said these people would be automatically released into home arrest if the program were enacted.

Bill Lamoreaux, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said Harper left out one critical element. Even if an inmate met [the law's] criteria, the plan requires each case to be reviewed, individually, by the Board of Executive Clemency. Lamoreaux said that panel could decide if an individual would be a danger to the community, even if required to wear a global positioning system ankle bracelet and be subject to drug and alcohol testing.

vericatrajkova Arizona, Early Release, Economic Issues

Arizona DOC know they are facing heavy budget cuts between $40m and $185m.  The Arizona Reporter asked the AZ DOC to provide a range of options if the state orders cuts of 5 to 20 percent. Here are some examples of ways to save:

Option: Eliminate 612 correction-officer positions.
Savings: $25 million.
Risk: Increased assaults on staff and among inmates.

Option: Reduce correction- officer training, incentives, uniform allowances, travel stipends and salary increases.
Savings: $17 million.
Risk: More difficult to recruit and retain already hard-to-staff positions that are vital to prison operations.

Option: Reduce funding for inmate programs.
Savings: $2 million.
Risk: The programs help reduce recidivism and target specific populations such as sex offenders.

Option: Rewrite criminal code to allow early release.
Savings: Up to $132 million.
Risk: Non-violent, first-time offenders would be released from state custody into county jails, house arrest or parole. That would leave serious, violent and repeat offenders in more overcrowded facilities with fewer corrections officers. The changes would eliminate nearly 1,200 positions.

vericatrajkova Arizona, Economic Issues

South Tucson owes Pima County AZ more than $500,000 for housing South Tucson prisoners in the county jail, and has been delinquent in its payments going back more than a decade.  Report from the Arizona Morning Star.

Faced with making cuts to compensate for lost tax revenue, county officials now are pressing the tiny city to come up with a payment plan and threatening to start charging interest on the overdue amount.  But South Tucson City Manager Enrique Serna said the city has no way to pay because it’s facing the same drop in revenue that everyone else is. He said South Tucson needs to make good on its debt, but the money just isn’t there right now.

South Tucson has accumulated the debt even though the county twice has bought property from the city and written down the debt — by $555,000 in 2000 and again by another $220,000 in 2008.  Because the Sheriff’s Department, which runs the jail, is funded almost entirely from the county general fund, jail costs that aren’t paid by South Tucson must be made up by taxpayers …

Serna said the city has no way to pay in the next few years. The city faces a 20 percent shortfall in tax revenues and has cut wages for city workers.  “That definitely has to be paid for out of our general fund, and since we’re going uphill and against the wind, we’re just going to have to try to negotiate something, and they’re going to have to bear with us,” Serna said.

vericatrajkova AZ Pima County, Arizona, County-City Issues, Economic Issues

Report from the Nashville Post:

Corrections Corp. of America has been awarded a 750-inmate management contract by the state of Arizona that will boost the number of prisoners under its care by about 1 percent.   Nashville-based CCA will house the prisoners at one of its facilities in Colorado. The agreement is for one year and comes with four possible one-year extensions. Based on CCA’s average daily revenue for 2008, the contract is worth about $15.6 million at full capacity.  The deal is CCA’s second with the state of Arizona. In May 2007, the state awarded the company a contract to manage up to 2,160 of its prisoners.

vericatrajkova Arizona, CCA, Private Prisons

Graham County and the Arizona Department of Forestry have struck an agreement that will see  inmate labor used to cut trees and clear brush, according to the Eastern Arizona Gazette.

Work crews, provided by the Arizona Department of Corrections, will be paid $2 per hour per crew member.   According to the agreement, each crew will be made up of no more than 20 members, and the maximum number of hours worked per week by the crew will be 40.   The agreement covers a two-year period; however, the county reserves the right to cancel the agreement due to funding limitations.  The Arizona Department of Forestry is required to provide the appropriate number of officers to supervise the crew, the agreement states.

vericatrajkova AZ Graham County, Inmate Labor

The financial crisis is forcing probation and parole agencies to reduce or drop prison time for thousands of offenders who violate conditions of their release. The changes, adopted by at least five states last year and under consideration in several others, worry some criminal justice analysts who warn loosening the rules might lead to more crime.  The USA Today reports:

“This needs to be done very, very carefully,” says Gene Voegtlin, legislative counsel for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He sees the need for savings, he says, “but at what cost?”   Probation and parole violators account for up to two-thirds of prison admissions each year in some states. The cost of locking them up for technical violations, such as drug-test failures or missed meetings with officers, is straining local budgets.   “Although some violators must be returned to prison to protect public safety, states are looking at how they can get people out of prison without risking public safety,” says Alison Lawrence of the National Conference of State Legislatures …Among the policy changes:

• Kansas is allowing probation and parole officers to decide whether those who violate early release conditions for non-violent offenses should go back to prison.  “The response to every violation doesn’t have to be a revocation of parole or probation,” Kansas Department of Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz says. The initiative has helped cut probation revocations by more than 20%.

• Tennessee Department of Corrections Commissioner George Little wants accelerated releases for probation and parole violators who are sent back to prison and complete drug-abuse and other counseling programs. The program would cut their prison time from about 17 months to three months.

• Arizona lawmakers approved a 2008 measure that lets thousands of probationers end their terms early. The program accelerates the “good time” they can apply against their sentences, reducing the chances they could be sent to prison for condition violations.

vericatrajkova Arizona, Community Corrections, Economic Issues, Kansas, Probation and Parole, Tennessee

Members of Congress asked the Justice and Homeland Security Departments on Friday to investigate accusations that Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County AZ has engaged in a pattern of racial profiling and other abuses against Latino residents. As reported by the New York Times.

Four members of the House Judiciary Committee, including the chairman, John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, raised of concerns about the sheriff … Sheriff Arpaio, a publicity magnet who is a hero to those who campaign against illegal immigration and a pariah to immigration advocates, brushed off the requests as political high jinks. “If they have concerns, they can call the F.B.I.,” Sheriff Arpaio said in an interview, promising to continue enforcing immigration laws.

The lawmakers asked the Justice Department to conduct a civil rights investigation of the sheriff’s practices, which in the past year have drawn complaints from civil libertarians and Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix. They accused sheriff’s deputies of unlawfully singling out Latinos for immigration checks during several crime sweeps …

The members of Congress also asked the Homeland Security Department, now headed by Janet Napolitano, the former Arizona governor, to reassess its agreement with the sheriff that allows deputies trained by the department to check the immigration status of detainees.  Sean Smith, a spokesman for Ms. Napolitano, who has been friendly with the sheriff but as governor had also expressed concerns about some of his tactics, said she had already ordered a review of the program, known as 287(g), which allows immigration officials to train and work with dozens of local law enforcement agencies. “Because of the questions about how 287(g) agreements are administered, and if uniform standards are being applied, Secretary Napolitano has asked for a review of the entire program,” Mr. Smith said in a statement …

Sheriff Arpaio said the members of Congress were misinformed or misunderstood his actions. He said that his deputies had not improperly singled out Latinos and that even if the agreement with federal immigration authorities was revoked, he would continue to enforce state laws aimed at human smugglers.

vericatrajkova AZ Maricopa County, Arizona